


Mismatched

by Kingmaking



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Past Rape/Non-con, robert is shitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kingmaking/pseuds/Kingmaking
Summary: She doesn’t thinkOurs, not like with Joffrey; Myrcella has no father.Myrcella is her mother's greatest mistake.





	Mismatched

****Cersei knows something is wrong about the new child even before she’s birthed it.

It begins early. The Grand Maester assures her that she’s due to deliver in the early moons of the next year, and Cersei ponders over dates for hours, counting the days since Robert last invited himself into her bed, focusing to remember when she last took Jaime, bitter struggles at dusk mixing with stolen, cherished afternoons.

The babe cannot be Robert’s, she’s positive. But then her belly grows and grows, faster than it did with Joffrey, and the babe moves and moves, and Maester Pycelle won’t stop repeating the same word, over and over: _Strong_. It makes Robert proud, giddy with excitement, and he leaves her alone for the length of her pregnancy, not laying a single finger on her.

It -- _She_ \-- comes early, but the labor is over in two hours, as opposed to Joffrey’s two days. Two hours of burning worry, because what if the child wasn't  _alright_ , was not hers entirely?

Cersei knows something is wrong about the new child before she even sees it, when it comes screaming and kicking into the world, howling loud enough to wake the dead. Robert’s bellowing could never be compared to a _babe’s_ , of course, but when Cersei hears it--

When Cersei sees it--

The sight of Myrcella, with her duvet of night-black hair and her eyes of darkest blue, has Cersei sobbing in a second, sobbing as no proud Queen should, because her body is bloody and broken from labor and she’s _exhausted_ , and how could she be so terribly wrong?

  
*

 _Not his_ , Cersei whispers hoarsely, holding Myrcella close and breathing in the scent unique to young children, _Mine mine mine_.

She doesn’t think _Ours_ , not like with Joffrey; Myrcella has no father.

Cersei nurses deceptive Myrcella at her own breast, because she’s barely even _hers_ already, and no other woman is to come near.

This is on the good days.

Myrcella is an itch she can never scratch, a proof of Robert’s victory over her, over her body, a breathing thing rather than purple and green patterns on Cersei’s skin.

It’s worse.

  
*

She cannot love anything of Robert’s, the way he deserves nothing of hers. But if Myrcella -- on the good days she is Myrcella, her flesh and blood; on the bad ones she is _the child_ , looking nothing like her -- is to belong to anyone, let it be Cersei.

  
*

It first becomes apparent when a few days have passed.

Myrcella’s left eye is blue, as blue as Robert’s, but the right one -- right, indeed -- is Lannister green, a cruel reminder that she could almost be Cersei’s entirely, but isn’t.

Mismatched eyes, just like the Imp; wrong eyes, wrong hair, wrong everything.

At least Cersei survived her birth; at least her crime isn’t so great as Tyrion’s, who sneaked his way into the world and killed Mother so he could live. The Imp dotes on her daughter whenever he darkens King’s Landing with his presence, marveling at her eyes, until Cersei bars him from the nursery.

The sorrow has Cersei trying for another child sooner than is advisable, really, but she is more than done listening to bloody, accursed Pycelle.

  
*

She loves her daughter, this she can swear and swear again on the bloody Seven who tricked her, but Myrcella is nothing like Joffrey.

A sweet little thing, but her brother eclipses her in every way, like the golden sun through a storm. He is so like Jaime, so luminous and strong, that Cersei’s mouth turns whenever she must behold Myrcella next to him.

Myrcella, with her Baratheon eye(s) and hair, her Baratheon strength, already bigger than most children her age. Myrcella, independent and eager to learn, although Cersei seldom has anything to show her. Her daughter is the realm of nurses, septas and maesters.

Robert doesn’t care for his -- His, his, his, how could she be so _wrong_? -- daughter any more than he cares for Joffrey, though, and there’s some victory to be had in that.

  
*

Tommen is right and wrong at the same time; nothing like Joffrey, but golden-haired and green-eyed. He and Myrcella sleep curled together in the same bed, onyx mixing with gold. Her daughter’s features aren’t unlike her own, when she’s relaxed and peaceful like this, a beauty such as rugged House Baratheon could never hope to breed.

But the left eye, the wrong eye, blue as sky… At night, Cersei dreams of cutting it out.

  
*

"She has Robert’s smile," says Jaime; Cersei ignores him for two days.

  
*

Cersei wakes one morning to find Joffrey has cut open Myrcella’s cat. A silly thing, something that most definitely shouldn’t warrant a blow from Robert’s hand to Joffrey’s face, but Cersei has Myrcella’s nurse dismissed and whipped anyway, for losing sight of the stupid cat and causing her daughter to spend hours choking out heart-wrenching tears.

And because it’s the wretched peasant’s name Myrcella called, whenever she had the breath for it.

  
*

When Robert strikes her for saying _No_ to a match between Myrcella and some unworthy little Stormlander whose mother he may or may not have fucked before the war, Cersei strikes back.

  
*

Old, sour-smelling Jon Arryn has a keen interest in Myrcella from the start. And the idea of her daughter as Lady of the Vale isn’t nearly as terrible as Cersei thought it’d be, although the son old Jon got on his milk-pale wife could never hope to be worthy of a Princess.

But Cersei allows it, if warily, watching alongside the Hand as Myrcella and his boy play.

"Some would think it a pity our Princess doesn’t share her brothers’s golden hair," Arryn says. "Others would think it a pity our Princes do not share her Baratheon strength."

"Joffrey is strong," Cersei says. "I reckon he’s to be the strongest king we’ve ever seen, my lord. I do hope you live to behold it."

And then: "Surely a look at my Robert and Lord Stannis would convince you that brothers and sisters do not always look alike. My husband is the most handsome man in the realm, whereas his brother..."

"Of course."

On the floor, Myrcella wins the game she and Sweetrobin were playing.

  
*

_Does it hurt to have a baby, Mama?_

_Sometimes._

_Did it hurt when I was born, then?_

_Terribly._

  
*

Cersei is most eager to show Casterly Rock to Myrcella. She makes her sleep in the rooms that were once hers, before her wedding, rooms left virtually untouched in the last thirteen years; They ride together along the coast and watch the sunset, running away from the waves the way she and Jaime once did. Here, in the shadow of the Rock, in the home of her childhood, in the rooms her lady Mother laughed and breathed in, Myrcella’s eyes both appear the correct shade of green, and she wears gowns of Lannister red and is Cersei’s entirely.

She remembers how Robert had wanted to name her _Cassana_ , for his own mother, and how she’d insisted on Myrcella, for queens and princesses of the Rock, even if there was nothing golden about her daughter.

Lord Tywin dances with Myrcella, names her a sensible girl, and sees nothing wrong about her, but he doesn’t understand.

  
*

"I wish I could be more like you," says Myrcella. Cersei is taken aback, but then her clever daughter, her scornful daughter, her only daughter, continues with: "Would you love me as much as you love Joffrey, then?"

  
*

After they leave the Rock, Myrcella hears about Jon Arryn, mourns for her weak little friend; Myrcella hears about Stannis and his bloody fleet, wonders about her ugly little cousin.

Cersei is told of Jon Arryn’s last hour by Pycelle, how the man kept repeating the same thing, over and over: _Robin, you must be strong_.

Myrcella is asking for tales of Robert’s shared youth with Ned Stark, tales of the North; later, much later, after they’ve crossed entire kingdoms to go freeze in Winterfell, she blushes and hides in her furs at the sight of Robb Stark, although Robert is more interested in a match between Joffrey and the eldest Stark girl, the red-haired one.

Cersei despises her. Isn’t her Myrcella far more graceful, far more beautiful?

  
*

_Robert Baratheon, murdered by a pig!_

Stannis returns; Renly betrays, but not for very long. Cersei’s daughter mourns for him. She wears red at Joffrey’s wedding to Sansa, gold when Tommen is wed to Shireen (nine and seven as they may be), and green on the day her betrothal to little Robert Arryn is announced. Cersei wears narrowed eyes and false smiles.

  
*

Myrcella is her greatest mistake; Cersei was foolish in thinking she could be hers, and good, and loving. Letters come after she leaves for the Vale with her weakling, to be fostered by some old Waynwood bitch, but half of them are for Tommen, the rest for Sansa or Tyrion.

Cersei learns not to care, crushed as she is between her lord Father and Joffrey, who fight over the Iron Throne and leave nothing for her.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter! ([x](https://twitter.com/targmother)) ✨


End file.
